Digging to Freedom
by Tairi Soraryu
Summary: Kyou first met Kagura when he was drawing in the dirt with a stick. But he didn't always use to use a stick...Writing challenge 3.


Disclaimer: I don't own Kyou, nor do I own Spain's annual Running of the Bulls. Though I would like to participate…That's a different matter altogether.

Today's topic: Spoons.

This probably wo't make much sense to you if you don't read the Furuba manga. Kyou's supposed to be a little boy here, if you didn't know. On the day he meets Kagura, he's drawing 'fried eggs' (look like circles to me) in the dirt. So I thought...maybe he'd like to play with spoons?

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**Digging to Freedom**

Kyou's ruby eyes were wide with interest as he crept up towards the tall countertop looming high over his head. It wasn't such a long stretch, really, if he thought about it, and he knew he could reach it if he really tried...

The tip of his tongue protruded between his lips as he raised himself to his tippy-toes, sticking a hand into the drawer left carelessly open and rummaging around. Cold, flat metalware greeted his fingers, and he made small, squeaky noises of exertion as he stretched to the fullest extent of his limited stature, his fingers finally closing over the flat, smooth handle of what he hoped was the right utensil.

Drawing his hand back into view, letting out a deep sigh of breath as he relaxed stretched muscles, Kyou allowed himself one triumphant grin of secret victory.

A spoon.

It gleamed dully in the late morning light that streamed through the window above the sink, and he turned it, admiring the polished silvery surface, the smooth concavity of the spoon head, the unblemished handle ending with the slight decorative engraving at the very end, where it flared out wider for easier gripping.

It was perfect.

He carefully tucked the spoon away into the front pocket of his plain, dark green sweatshirt, making sure that no part of the spoon was exposed as he poked his head cautiously around the corner of the kitchen and peered up the hallway. He could hear the sounds of his mother moving about in the living room, and he padded on silent, sock-clad feet over the bare wooden floor to reach up and tug lightly on her skirt.

"Okaasan." She glanced down at him, and Kyou suppressed the shiver that ran through him at the sight of those eyes, those lifeless, empty eyes. "Okaasan, I want to go outside and play. Can I go outside for a little bit? Just outside in the back? I want to play by the trees."

Her gaze was hollow, and it terrified him. Kyou could feel his body stiffen in instant rejection as his mother smoothed a hand over his flame-orange hair, as she ran her hands down his left arm to check for the juuzu he always wore around his wrist.

"Of course, little Kyou," she murmured, smiling that meaningless, dead-woman smile at him. "Of course. You be careful now, or you'll make Okaasan worry. And you don't want Okaasan to worry, do you? Okaasan loves you, Kyou, so don't make her worry..."

Kyuo ran out of the house, dragging in deep breaths of fresh air as he scampered around to the back of their small yard on the large enclosure. The walls of the Souma main house rose around him, towering, like the outskirts of a prison--Kyou had seen one, once, on the TV before his mom had turned it off--locking him inside with no escape. What was out there? he wondered, as he crouched down in the dirt in the shade of the leafy trees that rose above him. Green guardians of peace and solitude. Testaments to the fact that, despite everything else that went on within those four walls of the Souma compound, life flourished.

Somehow.

He checked around him before pulling out his spoon from the folds of his sweatshirt, followed by the map he'd drawn the previous day. On the folded and crumpled scrap of paper, he'd drawn in plant juice--he hadn't thought to bring a pen with him yesterday--the location of his secret hole.

He was going to dig himself out of the Souma compound. Dig so far, he'd end up across the world in Spain. He wanted to go to Spain, he thought as he measured the steps from the large boulder beside the newly planted elm and crouched down to begin the task. He wanted to see the _toros_, they were called, huge, black, horned, with rings through their noses and angry brown eyes. He wanted to see a city where people spoke in that fast, foreign tongue and ate food that looked so spicy and so good.

He wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, but here.

The spoon, and Kyou's hand up to the elbow, was covered in dirt, but he gamely dug on, throwing the upturned dirt to the growing pile at the foot of an old oak. He'd rolled up his sleeves so they wouldn't get dirty, but there was nothing he could do about his shorts. They were ruined.

He was in his hole--he'd planned it to be wide enough for him to crawl through comfortably--up to his ankles when his mother found him late that afternoon. Kyou hadn't been watching the sky to see how far the sun had sunk onto the western horizon; to know it was time to hurry back into the house before his mother came out to find him, and caught him in the middle of his escape plans.

Her scream jerked him roughly back to reality.

"Kyou!" His eyes, wide in fear at his discovery, lifted to his mother's face as she rushed forward, snatching him out of his hole and dragging him away from it as if it were a monster. "Kyou, what are you doing? You're making a mess of the landscape! What would you have done if Akito-sama had found you in there?" She brushed futilely at his pants, at his dirt-encrusted arm, and then caught sight of the spoon clutched in his hand. She snatched that next and scolded, on the verge of hysteria, "Kyou! What are you doing with this spoon? Where did you get it? Did you steal it?"

To his utter mortification, Kyou felt tears in the back of his throat. "No, Okaasan," he said in a small voice, looking over his shoulder at his hole. "I was just borrowing it so I could...so I could dig. I didn't mean to steal it, I just wanted to borrow it for today. And maybe tomorrow. Then I would return it when I was done."

His mother was taking deep, long breaths as if she could ground herself back in the present with the force of her will. "Kyou." She took a firm grip of his arm and steered him away from his endeavors. "You're not to be digging in the garden, do you understand? You can't just be taking spoons or whatever out of the kitchen for your little...escapades." He didn't like the way she said that, but Kyou held his silence. "If you want to play in the dirt, you'll have to play with things that belong in the dirt--sticks, rocks, plants. Spoons belong in the kitchen, not outside. Do you understand me?"

He bowed his head and sighed. You couldn't dig to Spain with a rock, could you? "Yes, Okaasan. I understand."

That was why he was playing with sticks in the dirt the day he first met Kagura...

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2.24.05 


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